Grazed Knees
by hobbitsdoitbetter
Summary: As the Cure's fallout rages, Hank McCoy races to heal someone he loves and face an opponent even the X-Men can't hope to beat... One shot, "Still Life," Universe,3 years in the past. For those who wanted background...


_Disclaimer: _This fan fiction is not written for profit and no infringement of copyright is intended. Unbetaed so all mistakes are mine. Set in the _Still-life _universe, three years ago. It's about a year since Marie and Remy did their Bonnie and Clyde and ran away. Just a little background for those who have expressed an interest… especially Obsidian Sins, who gave me the idea. Thank you and hope you all enjoy…

GRAZED KNEES

A clock was ticking.

Somewhere, Hank knew, a clock was always ticking.

Calling out endings like a mother to its child. Constantly reminding everyone of their responsibilities, their obligations. Their limits. Even those who wandered outside of human time, even those history walkers like Logan, were constantly aware of the clock. _However little attention they paid it._ The clock trapped them like a net, defined them even as they ran from it. Knit them tight into man's need to pace and measure, to mark his passing upon the world. But it never let them escape; that was impossible.

Just for a second Hank wanted to smash every clock he'd ever set eyes on and silence their smug, cold beat. Stop time, halt it, beat it into submission. But he knew he couldn't. Any more than he could save her. _Fight as much as you want, Henry, _he mused darkly,_ the clock keeps ticking on. _

Jubes… Jubilee… _The patient… _shifted in her sleep then, her face contorting in discomfort. Gave a little aching gasp like even breathing was painful now. Grimaced again, her spine arching and twisting in the bed, then lay still. Hank brushed the hair back from her face, trying to sooth her though he knew on some level that he could not. There was no help for her, no more medicine to pump through her system. No healers to bring in as they would have done when the mansion was at its height. He couldn't ease her passing, any more than he could prevent it: All he could do was watch.

And for Hank that was agony.

He forced himself to take her wrist (_her wrist, not her hand_) between his fingers then. Make like he was checking her pulse, since Kitty and Warren were probably watching next door. _He'd been so careful for so long: there was no need to break with tradition now. _She stirred slightly at his touch, eyes barely open. Breath hitching a butterfly beat in her throat. Sparks of light, dazzling and colourful, danced around her head and across his fingers- _The marks of her affection_- And immediately he let go. He'd nearly lost a hand treating her when she first arrived: her "pafs," were so volatile that only Colossus in his metal form had been able to carry her. But then that was what the Cure did. Suppressed the mutation until it broke free, raging out of control and taking down not only the host but anything unfortunate enough to be caught within firing range. He'd been lucky only his fur got singed: Twenty-four people, three of them children, had died last month when Shingen Yashida's powers finally flared out of control in downtown Kyoto.

Sometimes when he closed his eyes he saw them, those children. But most of the time he only saw Jubilee.

Hank turned away then. Sanitised his hands just to have something to do. He'd watched so many fall these last three months: The helplessness of his situation was eating him alive. Hospitals were choked with mutants; the death toll was heading towards the hundreds of thousands. Sixty percent of the so-called Cured had died within the last three months: Those who hadn't died (like Rogue) were simply waiting for the axe to fall. If their powers didn't come back their organs started to shut down, the Cure setting their own body at odds with itself. Most had their mutation returned only to see it flare violently out of control; For an unlucky few the Cure prompted a secondary mutation, which warred with their first and ripped them apart piece by agonising piece. Tabitha Smith had gone boom on a bus filled with pre-schoolers on a school trip to the Metropolitan Museum of Art; Sam Guthrie pierced the side of a reinforced steel warehouse like a bullet during a bar brawl, bringing the whole building down and rupturing a major gas-line in the process. Heather Douglas _alone_ had wiped out three city blocks when her telekinesis flared, the first truly public announcement of the Cure's fallout and the excuse for President Osborne to initiate martial law in Manhattan. Panic was stalking the streets, rising from them like steam on a hot day. Riots were common anywhere with a large mutant population, as were lynch-mobs: Both the WHO and the CDC had gone into NY's Mutant Town to combat the effects of the Cure and had ended up under siege. _So many dead, so many dying_. And inside every screaming headline lay a tiny, personal tragedy just like this one.

Just like his Jubilee.

Hank had known it was wrong: He was supposed to maintain his professional distance as a physician. It had been mentioned more than once during med school (along with such fine, robust words as _malfeasance, negligence _and _litigation._) One never took sexual advantage of a patient, much less a minor. But all of that had gone out the window when the twenty three year old Fire-Cracker had returned to the mansion, trailing Wolverine like a shadow and merrily torturing Bobby Drake. For the first time in his life Hank had been bewitched._ Enchanted. _She was so young, so damn impossible and contrary and fearless. Naturally he'd adored her_. _And while he'd never thought in a million years that she would want him, bright blue and furry and old enough to be her father as he was, he'd sworn he'd take care of her. Make her life easier in any way he could. She had given him…purpose, beyond medicine. Made him laugh, made him hopeful. Never once acted like she saw the blue fur and sharp teeth: Never called him Beast. He was always Hank in her eyes-

And he'd wanted so to be the man he saw reflected there.

He heard Marie clear her throat behind him then. She'd arrived a couple of days ago, sneaked out of the house from what Kurt had told him. Hadn't bothered to tell her husband where she was going, though if he had a brain in his head he could guess. LeBeau might not have liked the idea of her hanging around with the people who gave Warren Worthington III sanctuary (especially since Warren had refused to publicly disown his father before his death). However Remy should have known that the only woman ever to drive Wolverine to distraction wouldn't just roll over and play dead because her husband ordered her to. Political expediency wasn't high on her list of priorities when it came to her best friend, and if LeBeau didn't realise that after a year of marriage then they were even more badly suited than Hank had initially suspected. Remy LeBeau was bright, handsome, charming and articulate, even _without _his secondary mutation. But he was also stubborn, morally dubious and (from what Hank had seen) more than comfortable espousing a separatist cause when it suited him. _Charles Xavier he most certainly was not. _His time in the government's mutant experimentation program had marked him, made him cold in a way Logan had never become. Hank couldn't put his finger on it, (and he'd never have admitted it in a million years) but he suspected Wolverine was right in his opinion of the Ragin' Cajun…Just as he suspected that whatever came of Rogue's marriage would not be good…

"You want me t'take over, Hank?" Rogue asked gently then. He turned to find her at the door of the ICU, eyebrows raised expectantly. Eyes darting away from where he held Jubilee's wrist as soon as he noticed her staring. Hank nodded her it, forcing away the twinge of guilt at being caught. She smiled down at her friend, her expression scared and fond and hopeless all rolled into one. Hank envied her the freedom to be honest. She kissed Jubilee's forehead and just for a second tears came to her eyes.

He turned away to give her some privacy in her grief.

"C'Mon, take a break sugah," she murmured then. "You ain't bin outta here in days. Go get some jell-o or something."

"I can't." He tried to conjure some lie about not wanting to leave his station, but the words wouldn't form. Just turned from her, wanting desperately to hide his pain, but she saw it anyway. She'd spent a lot of time around Logan: she spoke fluent Uncommunicative Wild man.

"It's okay, Hank," she said kindly. Laid a hand on his arm, smiled again. "Ah'll call if she blinks, but ya gotta take a break now. She wouldn't wantcha doin' this t' yourself."

Her kindness was like a punch to the stomach. "Would you leave if it were Logan?" he heard his voice snap, apparently of its own volition. _He sounded angry, why would he sound angry-?_

A flash of hurt, too swift to register, passed over her face. The pain of that parting was still fresh, Hank knew. And despite their best efforts, nobody could find the Little Man, to warn him of Jubes' condition: Someone (probably Marie) was going to have to break the news after- After the patient was gone. But when Rogue answered her voice was steady. "If Ah knew it would ease his passing," she muttered, "Then yeah."

"Really?" He was less than convinced.

She cocked an eyebrow but didn't budge. Didn't answer either. Just held Jubilee's hand. "Have a shower and some food," she ordered. "Nobody's going anywhere yet." Again she smiled down at Jubilee. "She won't leave without you here, Hank. Believe me, she won't."

"What makes you say that?"

"Because she told me so." Now those blue eyes turned to his. McCoy blinked, not sure what to make of that statement, and she reached inside her jacket. Pulled out a stack of letters, the postmarks from Westchester, and wordlessly handed them over. Jubilee was the only person she'd given her new address with Remy to: she'd probably been too scared to let Logan have it. _Though if the Little Man had just admitted what was going on between them a year ago then the cloak and dagger routine would not have been necessary_- The letters were written in a messy, scrawling script he instantly recognised as Jubilee's. Folded haphazardly, the margins filled with little sketches and random thoughts. He suspected this was the closest he would ever see to the inside of Jubes' head.

"She mentioned you a lot," Marie said smilingly then. "Thought she wouldn't mind-Y'know, given the situation…" and for once the woman trailed off. Went back to smiling at her friend.

Henry didn't remember leaving her side. He just scanned through the letters quickly, picking out odd words. The handwriting so messy some of it looked like Sanskrit- His name appearing over and over again, usually followed by- Followed by some mention of how she was sure he'd never take her seriously. How he thought she was just some motor-mouth kid. But she'd written to Marie about him. Even tested the waters with Logan about whether he'd object to their "Getting down and jiggy, chica, if ya catch my drift?"- _he could imagine her laughter in his head-_ And amazingly Wolverine had given his consent. Or rather promised not to gut Hank in some ninja death match, which for Logan amounted to the same thing. He didn't remember leaving the ICU, didn't remember making his way to the exit, but he must have done.

Because when he looked up he was in the garden in front of Storm's office, and his face was wet with tears.

_Why hadn't she told him?_

Girl never ran into an opinion she didn't feel comfortable voicing. She could out-talk anyone, even Kurt on a caffeinated day, and yet she'd never mentioned this? She had come back to Westchester after college for two people: Logan and him. Logan because he was the closest thing she had to family, and Hank- Hank because she wanted him to become her family. _That was the way she put it to Marie. _All this time he'd been torturing himself about how his feelings could never be reciprocated, and Jubilation had been thinking the same thing. Keeping an uncharacteristic silence, which must have been killing her. It was just so… Unfair. That she hadn't told him. That he hadn't told her. That neither of them had trusted enough to move past their suspicions and take a risk-

And now she was lying in a hospital bed, slowly dying from a Cure she never wanted. Waiting for a chance she'd never get.

It hit Hank like a sledge-hammer then. _Screw smashing all the clocks: he wanted to personally hunt down and eliminate every Church of Humanity bastard who'd dosed her with the Cure. Wanted to test their faith in the Afterlife, if they thought it was open to those who murder innocent young women and think of it as God's will. _Hank could feel a rage unlike anything he'd ever encountered before welling up inside him, and for once he didn't turn away from it. Didn't even try to control it. If it made him more Beast than man he would let it take him, empower him. Make him stronger. His anger would be his weapon, his cloak and hard-fought shield-

_And what'd that do, 'cept turn you inta one of them, Blue? _He heard Jubes' voice though he couldn't see her. _You really think that's who I fell for? A Beast and not a man?_

It was like a slap to the face then, her voice. Because even if he knew it was just his imagination, he knew that that was really what she'd say. And how she'd say it. It wasn't like she didn't believe in vengeance: Wolverine had practically raised her these past few years, and she took most of her moral cues from him. But she also knew what it would do to _him_, to Hank, to know that he'd taken lives in in cold blood. He was a healer, that was what he did. If he used her as an excuse to give in to blood lust then he's never been the man they had both believed him to be. And he'd taint the love he had for her, cease to be the person he saw reflected in her eyes-

_It's the thing about being a hero, Blue, _he heard her whisper. _You never can tell when the universe is gonna give you a truly ball-breaking choice. But we roll with it and move on. _

'_Cos we're X-Men, darlin': Ya dig?_

Hank sat down then, the energy going out of him, and stared at her letters. Traced the scrawling, haphazard handwriting like it was a map of the human heart. He wanted to keep crying but he couldn't: he felt a superstitious dread that if he did the letters would simply vanish. It would be as if they never existed at all. But without grieving, what was he supposed to do now? Without being able to act, how would he keep from going insane? He didn't accept no, he'd never accepted it. He was an X-Man for crying out loud-

And then it came to him, sudden and irresistible as Jubilation. The way to keep on going, the way to stay the man she'd known. He would be the healer she'd fallen for. Be the man she'd loved. Logan did what he did for Marie's sake-

He'd do what he could for Jubilee's.

He'd keep going, he'd keep healing others. He'd make sure Kitty got away from her husband. He'd try to make Rogue comfortable when her time came. And he'd keep doing it. It wasn't the perfect answer, not even close to one. But at least it brought him some peace.

At least it brought him closer to Jubilee.

******************************************

He heard it before anyone else did. The sound of a heart monitor flat-lining. That butterfly breath of life drifting away. He got back into the ICU in record time, pushing Warren out of the way as he went and checking her. Already knowing what he had to do and why. Rogue was standing by the wall, holding onto Storm like a child to her mother. Kitty was crushed against Pyotr's massive chest, the black eye and burns Pyro had given her incongruous on her pretty face. Kurt was pushing at Jubes' chest, trying to give CPR, but it wasn't working- Nothing was working- Everyone was crying, screaming, angry.

Except Hank. He was the picture of calm.

He worked on her for fifteen minutes before he called it. Tried everything he could think and then let her die in peace. And when she breathed her last, he swore she smiled at him. Her paffs exploding above her like a trail of shooting stars. He didn't notice Marie ushering people out of the ICU. Barely felt her hand on her his shoulder as she whispered he would have to say goodbye. When Hank looked up he was alone with his Jubilation-

And when Hank left the room an hour later, he'd told her all he meant to say.

He would not speak of it again, to anyone. Not Marie. Not even Logan. But when he thinks he can't possibly go through with something he reads her letters. He remembers her fire-cracker smile. And reminds himself of the man she knew he could be.

He does what he does for her sake. It wasn't the perfect answer, not even close to it-

But at least it brings him closer to Jubilee.

A/N There now. that just wouldn't leave me alone. Hope it answers some questions, and was a good read. Reviews are always welcome, and

hobbits away, ho!


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